Songwriter Mark Erelli delivers America in haunting album

Friday

Aug 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2008 at 1:38 PM

It’s not easy to reference current events in songs these days without alienating half your audience. But Cambridge, Mass., songwriter Mark Erelli succeeds in providing a very moving snapshot of what it’s like to live in America in 2008 on his new album, “Delivered,” due out Sept. 16 on Signature Sounds.

Jay N. Miller

It’s not easy to reference current events in songs these days without alienating half your audience. But Cambridge, Mass., songwriter Mark Erelli succeeds in providing a very moving snapshot of what it’s like to live in America in 2008 on his new album, “Delivered,” due out Sept. 16 on Signature Sounds.

A few songs on the album deal with the Iraq war and its effect on Americans. The opening tune, “Hope Dies Last,” comes from the perspective of average citizens switching on the news and being overwhelmed by war, natural disasters and political frustration. Ultimately, the couple in the song find salvation in each other.

The song “Shadowland,” on the other hand, has little salvation to offer, in its harrowing portrait of an American soldier trying to survive in Iraq.

“Volunteers” is one of the most poignant songs of the year, depicting a National Guardsman who finds himself immersed in horrors he never imagined, where “over here it’s a victory just to make it through another day.”

So it’s not exactly a breezy pop album, but Erelli’s tunes, delivered in formats ranging from solo with acoustic guitar to rockin’ quintets, remind us of the humanity beneath the helmets.

The second half of the album reflects transitions in Erelli’s life, including the birth of his first child and the death of his father.

The final cut, “Abraham,” combines the two threads, suggesting the way to restore the hope and promise of Abraham Lincoln’s nation is within ourselves more than in any leader.

“Writing this kind of album while keeping it nonpartisan is probably the hardest thing to do in this kind of climate,” Erelli said. “It was hard to write songs that weren’t going to be polarizing, yet still reflect what we’re doing. I did not want to write songs that immediately sent both sides to their respective corners of the ring. But this war has been the backdrop to all of our lives for more than five years now, and I would have had to actively censor myself to write without dealing with it.

“On ‘Hope Dies Last’ I see it both ways,” he said. “If you stopped it in the middle, yes, it is downbeat, but by the end of the song there is very much a feeling that, whatever bad things happen in the world, the good things in our lives like family don’t ever change.

“You can see the song either way, I guess, which is interesting to me, because I felt like it was mainly about taking refuge in the people and relationships that matter,” Erelli said. “That song came out of too many mornings of hearing the NPR headlines while I made our coffee, getting this parade of things blowing up, hurricanes striking, levees bursting. There’s a de-sensitivation that occurs, yet it also leaves you feeling raw and vulnerable. You tend to re-focus on your own life and family, and be more thankful for them.”

Erelli wrote “Shadowland” partly because he found it amazing how the war has little effect on so many citizens here, while obviously devastating the lives of others.

“Because there has not been a national call to sacrifice, like the draft, it is possible for someone, like me, to not know anyone affected directly by this war,” Erelli said. “I find that astonishing. So this song is not about people I know.

“The story comes from seeing and reading news reports, about all these soldiers, many barely 20 years old – still kids in some ways – saddled with, and asked, to do these things in my name,” he said. “I’m grateful for what they do, and I find dignity in it. Yet the song also has an indictment of the torture over there, and the fact that we didn’t even have to drag ourselves down to that level.”

One of the other tunes on the album, “Five Beers Moon,” is simply a rocking look at a workingman in a seaside town in winter. It could be about Hull or it could be a Bruce Springsteen tale about Asbury Park, but it’s another superb Erelli snapshot of America 2008.

“I thought it was important that the album not be all heavy stuff,” Erelli said. “A song like ‘Five Beers’ is an attempt to show how the personal and political are often intertwined, because that’s the way life is. On the album sequence, it comes right after ‘Volunteers’ because I felt like maybe if that National Guardsman got back, he might end up in a seaside town like that. It’s a continuing story, or people caught up in circumstances beyond their control, which is also kind of how I felt as a new father.”

Erelli spent much of last summer touring as part of Lori McKenna’s band, as she opened the Tim McGraw/Faith Hill tour. It was valuable exposure, and a chance to perform with an old pal from the Massachusetts folk scene. That tour’s high point for Erelli and McKenna had to be the sold-out show at the TD Banknorth Garden in Boston.

“Standing on that stage at the Garden with all those people out there – those are everyone’s teenage dreams come true,” Erelli admitted. “Tim and Faith were very good to us, and made us a real part of the show.”

Erelli is set to perform Sept. 5 at Cafe 939 in Boston.

Jay N. Miller covers popular music for The Patriot Ledger. If you have information or ideas for Jay about the local music scene, bookings, recordings, artists, etc., send it to him by e-mail to features@ledger.com. Attn: Music Scene in the subject line.

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